


Awake

by TaliaAlianova



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Capsicle, Headcanon, Hurt, Minor Violence, Pre-Avengers (2012), Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:38:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7880413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaliaAlianova/pseuds/TaliaAlianova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve was awake.</p>
<p>Warning for minor depictions of violence/injury<br/>Don't like ice? This is probably not for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awake

Steve was awake when the plane went down. He was aware of the impact.

Steve's body slammed forward, hitting the controls and breaking a couple ribs. He ad probably hit his head. "Peggy..." Steve whispered, "Peg.." He let tears slide down his cheeks and drip of his chin as metal crunched and shifted around him.

He felt a small current of electricity jolt him awake before the engine died completely. He felt ice cold water on his ankles, his suit offering limited protection from it. Steve admitted this was probably going to be his last act. 

He struggled up as the water raised to his thigh level, no use giving up yet. He braced against the back of the chair and climbed back to the bench behind it. He grabbed his shield as the plane tilted towards the now shattered windscreen. Steve sat down grimacing, the shocks sending spasms through his muscles. He laid on his back forcing down panic and regret. He relived his darkest moments; not talking to Bucky about what happened to him, not searching for Bucky's body, not leaning on the Commandos when he needed them, and most of all, not being able to catch Bucky. His biggest failure. He quickly shut down that train of thought, knowing he had minutes left.

Steve lifted his shield onto his chest and whimpered as the water slid over his already partially frozen legs. He swallowed down bile, when they find his body he at least wanted to look like the hero they had forced him to be. Steve tried to suppress a sarcastic icy half smile as he felt the water seep over his legs and arms. His limbs were already freezing to the metal. All Steve could see was the black of the plane, the white of the shard of landscape through where the windscreen used to be, and the frozen blue promises of the freezing water slurried with ice. 

Steve consciously kept his eyes form slipping closed as the waterline hit his neck, by this point, he was wracked by uncontrollable shivers and full body twitches. He never had feared death, not when he was a punk kid on the streets, when he only had one friend in the world, not in the war, and especially not now. Now, he even welcomed death, and no he really didn't want to know what that meant for his state of mind. 

By now, ice was on his chest and all his limbs were numb, probably frozen too. He barely felt the water gracing his cheeks, not all of it belonging to the ocean. He saw his small amount of breath puffing in the air before him. It was funny, the face of death let him notice all the small things he would normally dismiss. If he could have laughed he would, he would have laughed til his lungs ran dry and tears rolled down his face. Oh, the irony. He had just become capable of everything he previously was not and now he couldn't even breathe properly. Just like the good ol' days, he thought.

The water crept upward and upward until, before he knew it, it was burning his eyes. He couldn't close them and resigned himself to slowly dying with his eyes open. None of this was how he wanted to go but this was how it would end, he was sure. And finally! The water was over his eyes and freezing to ice.

He could finally die.

 

But...

 

No,

No.

 

NO!

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He... He.. He wasn't dead, he wasn't unconscious and he could barely see. Ice was frozen over his still open eyes. His brain was freezing, Steve registered the pain in each of his limbs and was have yelled, screamed, or even cried. But he was stuck, suspended in his own body. 

 

In what could have been hours, minutes, or days, Steve slowly felt all feeling receding from his very bones. He was betrayed, once again, by his own body.

 

Time went on, Steve's mind played back memories, and he slowly lost his sight. He remembered the time in second grade, before his lousy father had died, when he was slapped by his dad in the middle of the classroom. He remembered when he was nine and the world truly went to shit and all his mother could do was work extra shifts in the hospital. He remembered meeting Bucky when he was seven, after he got beat up for telling Big Bobby to leave Betty alone in the schoolyard. He remembered his mother's funeral. He remembered the few trips to Coney Island. He remembered his first job, his second one, and all the ones that barely lasted a week. The floodgates were opened on why his mind did to block out the pain and the numb. By the time his vision went he had thought of his thirteenth birthday twice. And one of the trips to Coney Island five times. By the time he could only see blackness and feel a dull fire of pure cold, he had remembered Bucky's fall seventy three times.

 

Time passed. Nothing mattered but the memories, and the small hope that they would find him, and the pain. 

 

 

Steve knew that he had lost part of himself. He had lost a big part of himself when Bucky went down and he had before that with his Ma when she has caught tuberculosis after too many shifts. He was familiar with the feeling, loss fit like an old glove. 

 

Sometimes Steve wished for his sketch pad, other times for a book to occupy his time, but most of all, he wish for it to either end or let him out of his frozen prison.

 

More time passed. Months and Years. Steve wished for release. He wanted a change, anything.

 

Years more passed, Steve stared counting. One ........ two three... four

Five Six... Seven

 

Eight..  
Nine

 

.....ten

 

Nothing could alleviate the boredom.  
Steve tried to imagine but all he could come up with was nastolgia.  
He tried to hope but seconds passing made it unbearable.  
Nothing worked so Steve sank  
And sank

 

Into unfathomable oblivion.

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

At first, he didn't know what had changed.

He still couldn't hear anything past the whispers inside his own head. His thoughts were all worn and hope was damn near impossible, but something had dragged him out of his own little hell. 

 

For the first time in an indeterminable amount of years, Steve saw.

 

There were shapes, moving things, shadows. He suspected that that most of the water had drained after the plane had bottomed out or the water below it had refrozen. He hoped this wasn't simply his fantasy again.

 

But who knows.... Steve waited for weeks? Months?

 

Years..?

Centuries.......?

 

Steve had long since stopped trying to determine time.

Suddenly, he felt a hot burn on his fingertips. He would have screamed if there was any air to take in or let out. The flames spread up his hands and his arms. Steve would haves sobbed. The unbearable heat reached his chest and had long since eaten up his legs and Steve would have wailed and cried and begged and screamed himself beyond whispering, but he remained deathly silent. His agony was finally too much as it flicked up his neck, that Steve passed out.

 

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

And awoke. 

In a bed that was too soft to be his or Bucky's or any place he had ever slept. He didn't know how to move, he had long since forgotten how to sleep, much less wake up. He took an eternity in what could have been seconds or weeks to open his eyes. Right then, he knew it was all wrong.

He wasn't wearing the suit anymore but he had on trousers, socks and shoes on while in a bed, that was not a good sign. He saw the window, open. That would never happen in a normal hospital, so it could be a special SSR room. A radio was playing, not altogether unusual but something was off......

 

Seconds later, a woman came into the room. "Good morning, or should i say, afternoon." She stated. Steve took mere seconds to know that none of her, none of this, was right. She wore an ill fitting shirt, not uncommon but unusual for SSR nurses to dress poorly. Her hair was down in loose curls. No nurse would have her hair down and have that time to be so composed. So that narrowed the options down. Not a nurse, probably so composed because meeting Captain America is a special case. But.... It didn't add up. If Peggy was alive she would be right next to him along with the Howling Commandos. Yet, no one. And, it snapped into place, the game! On the radio, he was there when it was on! Oh this was not good.

"Where am I?" Steve asked, more demand than question. The woman was kept Her cool. "Yo are in a recovery room in New York." "Where am I really?" Steve asked again knowing that the woman was lying. "I'm afraid I don't understand." The woman replied. Steve could see her trying to keep calm and cover her obvious tells. Her voice quivered and she stared to look slightly terrified. 

 

"The game. It's from May, 1947. I know because I was there." Steve rose off the bed and saw the woman's facial tells come out completely. She was clearly afraid. "Now I'm going to ask you again," Steve said once more, "Where am I?" The woman backed away and said "Captain Rogers..." 

 

She didn't complete her thought because two men dressed in black burst and Steve immediately threw them into the wall, and saw that the simply burst through it. He wasn't surprised, after all he knew something was off. He jumped through the hole the goons had created, leaving the woman behind, and saw the outside of the room looked like a movie set closed in on all sides. He was in a large concrete room. He looked around for a moment and saw two doors. He ran at then and burst into a hallway. An alarm sounded and the small amount of people he could see reached for guns that seemed to be attached to all of their strange clothes. Steve raced down the opposite way and hit doors leading to the outside. He saw lots of cars and pedestrians and light and kept running. He didn't know where he was but he did know that he didn't want to be caught. 

 

He ran into the road and cars honked and swerved, the sound was different, things were louder, light caught his eye. He stopped in the middle of the road, this was worse, so much worse that what he imagined. The lights were bright there were messages written on huge boards that moved and people were screaming. The last thought jolted him back to reality, strange black cars had circled him while he was distracted, people clothes that matched the cars and large guns go out. A black man in an eyepatch and long leather coat swept forward. Steve knew he was supposed to be intimidated but he had imagined worse than a pirate in leather. (In his brain the whispers concurred and giggled) 

 

Steve finally paid attention, listening to the man give a spiel about breaking it to him slowly. He didn't fully tune in until he said it. 

 

70 years in the future.

He had been awake for seventy years. No wonder he was half crazy. No wonder he heard whispers. No wonder he didn't have a plan for this one.

 

Steve went through the rest of the day in a haze, being led back to what was apparently a new form of the SSR's headquarters. Hours later, after too many people rambled about too many things, Steve was given a room. He heard a click and figured they didn't want him running off again. He disabled the camera by was of force and for the first time in seventy years.

 

Steve Rogers slept of his own accord.

**Author's Note:**

> Oops sorry, this is my first fic and probably a little depressing I saw a lack of this prompt and decided to fight the ignorance. Sorry 
> 
> -Me


End file.
